Underneath the Antarctic ice, researchers found a massive, preserved landscape of river valleys and hills that has been locked away for millions of years.
The British and American team warned that although this region—which is larger than Belgium—hasn’t changed in over 34 million years, global warming caused by humans puts it at risk of being exposed. Professor Stewart Jamieson, a glaciologist from Durham University who led the study, explained that this terrain was completely unknown and had never been seen by anyone.
A landscape lost to time and ice
Spanning roughly 12,000 square miles, the area used to be full of trees, forests, and likely wild animals.
Researchers have found a massive terrain of river valleys and hills buried under the Antarctic ice, where it has been perfectly preserved for millions of years.
The British and American team warned that while this area—which is larger than Belgium—hasn’t changed in over 34 million years, human-caused global warming risks revealing it.
Professor Stewart Jamieson, a glaciologist from Durham University who led the study, said this is completely new territory that nobody has ever seen before.
Spanning about 12,000 square miles, the region was once filled with trees, forests, and likely wildlife. But then the ice arrived and essentially locked the landscape in a time capsule, Jamieson explained. He added that it’s thrilling because it was hiding in plain sight, noting that they didn’t use new data, just a different method.
Discovering the underworld like Julius Verne
We actually know less about the ground beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet than we do about the surface of Mars, according to Jamieson. Usually, the way to see under the ice is by flying planes over it to beam down radio waves and read the echoes, a process called radio-echo sounding.
However, doing that for the entire continent would be a massive task since Antarctica is bigger than Europe.
So, the team used existing satellite pictures of the ice surface to map out the ridges and valleys buried more than 1.6 miles deep, Jamieson said.
He explained that the rolling ice on the surface creates a ghostly outline that hangs loosely over the jagged rocks underneath.
Once they added the radio-echo data, a picture formed showing a river-carved landscape with steep valleys and pointy hills, similar to what you might see elsewhere on Earth.
Jamieson likened the terrain to Snowdonia in North Wales, saying it felt like staring out the window of a long flight at mountains down below. It is hard to say exactly when sunlight last reached this hidden world, but the researchers are sure it has been at least 14 million years. Jamieson mentioned his gut feeling is that it was last exposed more than 34 million years ago, back when Antarctica first froze over.
The climatic threat to this paradise
Members of the team previously discovered a lake the size of a city beneath the ice, and they think there are more ancient terrains down there waiting to be found. The study’s authors warned that global warming might endanger this newly found landscape.
In the journal Nature Communications, they wrote that we are heading toward atmospheric conditions like those seen between 14 and 34 million years ago, back when temperatures were 3°C to 7°C warmer than they are now. Jamieson pointed out that the landscape sits hundreds of kilometers inland from the ice edge, meaning it will be a long time before it gets exposed.
There is reason for hope though, since the ice didn’t retreat enough to reveal this landscape during past warm spells, like the Pliocene period 3 to 4.5 million years ago. However, the scientists noted that it isn’t clear yet what exactly would trigger an unstoppable melting reaction.
This study came out just one day after scientists warned that melting in the nearby West Antarctic ice sheet will likely speed up significantly in the next few decades, even if we hit our climate goals.